Printer-friendly version
| Tom Conley Abbott Lawrence Lowell Professor of Romance Languages & Literatures tconley@fas.harvard.edu 495-2272 (office) 495-2274 (home) Verena Conley |
Tom and Verena Conley are responsible for the general administration of the House. They coordinate policies, supervise appointments, and oversee the welfare of the House community. The co-masters regularly open their home to all members of Kirkland House during their Masters' Open Houses, announced on the online house calendar here as well as by posters in the main archway and dining hall. You can also see pictures of these and other recent Kirkland House events here. Everyone is welcome and encouraged to attend!
I came to Harvard in 1995 and to Kirkland House in 2000. Trained in early modern French literature at Columbia University (M.A.) and the University of Wisconsin (Ph.D.), I taught at a number of public institutions (Minnesota, UC-Berkeley, UCLA, Miami of Ohio, and the Graduate Center of CUNY) before joining Romance Languages and, more recently, finding additional affiliation with Film Studies Program (VES) and the Program in Literature. My research of late has been devoted to cartography and literature. A rival passion is in film studies from the silent era up to now. In 2003-4 a Guggenheim Fellowship allowed me to complete Cartography and Cinema (2007). In the summer of 2003 I led a seminar at the School of Critical Theory (Cornell University) and in 2004 a course, taught at the Institut d’études françaises d’Avignon, on Petrarch and Petrarchism in sixteenth-century French lyrical poetry. While on leave at the Kirkland House in 2007 I finished a forthcoming book, An Errant Eye: Topography and Poetry in Renaissance France. In January of 2010 I shall lead a seminar in Paris at the Ecole en Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales. A devotee of handball (“the perfect game”), I play in the cavernous courts of the Boston Central Y. I am an indelible Red Sox fan and, too (Patriots notwithstanding) a lifelong follower the New York Football Giants, who loves the great outdoors. I was born in Zurich, Switzerland and spent my childhood on the shores of Lake Geneva. Raised bilingually in a family that specialized in business in Southeast Asia, I quickly developed a liking for other languages and cultures. After an education in the liberal arts built around seven years of Latin, a Fulbright fellowship allowed me to settle on American shores. I turned resolutely to modern studies at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, earning my Ph.D. in French and Comparative Literature. I have taught at several institutions, including Miami University, the University of Paris-VIII, the University of California at Berkeley, and UCLA. At Harvard, I teach in Literature and Comparative Literature and Romance Languages and Literatures. I am currently offering courses on Parisian cityscapes, transformations of space in contemporary culture, the city, technology, existential literature and cultural theory. I write on problems in contemporary French literature and culture, problems of the environment and technologies. I just finished a new book on the transformations of space in contemporary French culture. I spent last fall as a senior fellow at the Society for the Humanities at Cornell University where the theme was water as a critical concept. From this I am now developing a new project on water and the humanities. I love swimming, walking on the beach, going to movies, to Red Sox and Harvard football games as well as playing with our dogs Brandi and Jesse, and our cat Joe. I also enjoy retreating to our cabin near the Boundary Waters Wilderness Area for the pleasure of retro life and the great outdoors. You can read about my adventures with beavers and bears in one of my recent books.
